7 Lessons From ‘500 Days Of Summer’ That Still Hold Up Today
500 Days Of Summer is a romantic comedy from 2009 starring Zooey Deschanel as Summer and Joseph Gordan-Levitt as Tom, a sort-of “couple” who meet while working at a greeting card company in New York City.
Summer is only looking for a casual arrangement but that doesn’t stop Tom from imagining differently and falling in love anyway.
500 Days Of Summer is hilarious and poignant, but mostly it is a fairly realistic portrait of what happens when expectations don’t meet reality. But mostly, it shows the inevitable heartbreak that occurs when someone falls in love with an idea, ignores the warning signs, and isn’t true to their heart.
500 Days Of Summer is also still incredibly relevant in 2024. As such, here are seven lessons from 500 Days Of Summer that still hold up today.
1. Be honest about what you want. Both with the other person and yourself.
If you don’t want casual, don’t say you’re cool with going with the flow.
While playing house, making out, and flirting at IKEA, Summer tells Tom she isn’t looking for anything serious. In other words, she doesn’t want a relationship. (With him.) Tom agrees and says that’s cool with him.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. But Tom tries to convince himself otherwise all the same. At one point, when Tom’s best friends McKenzie and Paul ask what Tom and Summer are label-wise, Tom scoffs, insisting that labels are juvenile and this is the way of modern dating. His friends look on skeptically, and they’re right to do so. After all, Tom is a certified hopeless romantic who believes in soulmates and that he’ll never truly be happy until he finds “The One.” And this only becomes more and more apparent as the film goes on. Because Tom does want a relationship; a relationship with Summer. Not casual. Not something situationship-y. A full-fledged, committed relationship.
Spoiler alert two: It never happens.
On that note…
2. If someone says they don’t want a relationship, believe them.
While Summer does lead Tom on at times throughout the movie, the truth of the matter is that she did fully and adamantly communicate that she was not looking for a relationship. She wanted to have fun, and Tom was fun! They had a lot in common, from their love of sad British music like The Smiths to obscure movies and more. However, Tom took these mutual interests and chemistry as signs of compatibility, ignoring Summer’s clear message that she was not interested in pursuing a relationship with him. In other words, he refused to believe what she was saying and ascribed alternate meanings to her words. That maybe she just needed time to let her walls down and let him in.
3. Your expectations will break your heart more than anything else.
One of the most powerful and beautifully-shot moments is the side-by-side depiction of the misalignment that often plays out between our expectations and reality.
Summer and Tom had already been broken up for some time but had run into one another at a mutual friend’s wedding. The two bonded, danced, and drank together. It (almost) seemed as though things hadn’t changed much. They definitely hadn’t for Tom, at least.
Some time in the future, Summer invites Tom to her apartment for a party. As the narrator states, “Tom walked to her apartment, intoxicated by the promise of the evening. He believed that this time, his expectations would align with reality.”
Each shot in the segment shows this was not the case at all. In fact, Tom runs out of the party once he sees Summer has an engagement ring on her finger. She fell in love with someone else.
4. Love won’t save you.
Tom grew up believing that he’d never truly be happy until he found “The One,” which might be part of the reason he put so much pressure on having things work out with Summer. At one point, he even admits that his feelings for Summer make him feel like life is worth living.
The truth of the matter is love will not save you. This is not to say you need to be perfectly healed in order to find it, though. But you at least have to be trying to get yourself and life together before you share it with someone else.
5. Healing from heartbreak takes time.
Sometimes, a lot of time. And the process isn’t linear either. In fact, 500 Days Of Summer is even filmed out of order to illustrate this. The movie jumps from various points in time to show the juxtaposition of when Tom was in love with Summer, healing from Summer, and eventually moving on from Summer.
6. Illusions will always disintegrate eventually.
Throughout the non-linear film, we are shown flashbacks of Tom’s perspective of his romance with Summer. Initially, everything in his mind’s eye seems romantic and promising. However, towards the end of the movie, after Tom’s little sister encourages him to look backward at his love affair with Summer in a more realistic lens, the rose-colored glasses fall off and we see the full picture: Summer was not interested in him in the same way he was in her. And there were plenty of signs that showed this.
7. You need to love someone for who they actually are (not for who you think they are).
Probably the biggest takeaway from 500 Days Of Summer is the dangers of falling in love with the idea of someone, and not who they actually are. Tom placed Summer on a pedestal, hopelessly pining after her because he felt that there would never be anyone else who he could possibly love the way he loved her. And he might be right, but only because he constructed who he thought she was, not embracing who she actually was. Sure, the Summer he made up may have been his dream girl, but you have to wake up from dreams eventually, right? As Tom’s Paul puts it about his partner, Robyn: